Beside The Points For Monday, Sept. 18, 2017

Things That Caught My Eye

The Denver Broncos have cracked Ezekiel Elliott. Their defense held the Dallas running back to only eight yards on nine carries in their 42-17 victory Sunday. Elliott’s previous career low — on a professional football field at least — was when he ran only 51 years in his first game. [NBC]

After three weeks of loss-free baseball, the Cleveland Indians finally dropped a game on Friday to the Kansas City Royals, ending their streak at 22 games with a combined scoring margin of 142-37. Of course there’s an old-timey baseball fly in the ointment here, namely the 1916 New York Giants’ 26-game winning streak. Still, if you account for the size of rotations and the era in which the Indians are playing, a generic MLB contender had a 1-in-65,566 chance of matching the streak by our calculations, making it the best run ever by far. [FiveThirtyEight]

Antonio Gates’s third-quarter touchdown against Miami was the 112th of the longtime Chargers star’s career. This put him ahead of Tony Gonzalez with the record for most touchdowns ever caught by a tight end. It’s a delightful scene. [Deadspin]

Clemson climbed to No. 2 in the AP poll after beating Louisville on Saturday. The Tigers are now behind only Alabama, the team they beat in the final seconds of the College Football Championship Game last year. [ESPN]

Mike Scioscia, manager of the Los Angeles Angels, used 12 different pitchers over the course of 11 innings in a Labor Day victory over Oakland. Major League Baseball allows teams to expand rosters from 25 to 40 players in September, which in addition to allowing for ridiculous feats like that also modestly slows down play and aggravates clubhouses dealing with some cramped facilities. [ESPN]

Big Number

Younghoe Koo’s missed 44-yard field goal attempt in the last seconds of Dolphins-Chargers led to the biggest swing in win probability observed in Sunday’s NFL games. When Koo’s kick sailed wide right, the Chargers’ chances of winning instantaneously dropped from 79.6 percent to nil. At least there were fireworks![ESPN]

Leaks from Slack

anonymous sarcastic colleague:

Will the streak ever end?

neil:

lol

neil:

This is still Cleveland we’re talking about here

neil:

They’re backloading the losing so they can instantly be swept in the ALDS